Private Investigators Fiction

Appie Knoll is the kind of suburb where kids grow up right. But something is wrong. Fourteen-year-old Kevin Bartlett disappears. Everyone thinks he's run away -- until the comic strip ransom note arrives. It doesn't take Spenser long to get the picture -- an affluent family seething with rage, a desperate boy making strange friends...friends like Vic Harroway, body builder. Mr. Muscle is Spenser's only lead and he isn't talking...except with his fists

Ex-Police Scotland detective Bob Hoon has made himself some powerful enemies. Following his brutal search for the missing daughter of an old army colleague, Hoon is being hunted by the Loop, a secretive criminal cabal with members in very high places and a tendency to eliminate all those who stand against it. Unfortunately for them, Hoon has never been one to back down from a fight, and he isn’t about to start now. Instead, he’s going to burn their whole damn organization to the ground. But first, he’s going to have to get inside.

Natalka and Edwin are perfect if improbable partners in a detective agency. At eighty-four, Edwin regularly claims that he’s the oldest detective in England. He is a master at surveillance, deploying his age as a cloak of invisibility. Natalka, Ukrainian-born and more than fifty years his junior, is a math whizz, who takes any cases concerning fraud or deception. Despite a steady stream of minor cases, Natalka is frustrated. She loves a murder, as she’s fond of saying, and none have come the agency’s way. That is until local writer Melody Chambers dies.

New York Times best-selling author William Kent Krueger has won numerous accolades for his books, including the Anthony Award for Best First Novel. In Trickster’s Point, the 12th suspenseful installment in Krueger’s Cork O’Connor series, Cork is framed for the murder of Minnesota’s first Native American governor-elect, Jubal Little. As Cork fights to clear his name and uncover the truth, he discovers that events from his own past may hold the key to the real killer’s identity.

On the cusp of forty, Justine Bailen, better known as Jo, works for an all-female detective agency based in Tucson, Arizona. While staking out a cheating spouse, she learns that her long-estranged best friend from childhood, Rose, is missing, and that Rose’s mother wants to hire Jo to find her. This case is all kinds of wrong for Jo, but she has no choice but to head back to her hometown, an hour north and a world away from Tucson.

When a South Florida golf club is hit with a series of suspicious events on the eve of hosting a big tournament, there’s only one man to call. Miami Jones. But when a caddy goes missing after an altercation with Jones, Miami finds himself in the middle of the case - not just solving it. Miami must navigate billionaire property developers engaged in a high-priced tit-for-tat, death threats, and a state investigator interested in his girlfriend in a professional capacity, and maybe more - to keep himself, the club, and the great state of Florida well and truly out of the deep rough.

This latest installment of the beloved No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series finds Botswana's premier detective agency as busy as ever, with no shortage of sensitive situations requiring Mma Ramotswe's keen eye and discerning input. Through it all, Mma Ramotswe will demonstrate that there are solutions to all manner of difficulties, there to be discovered as long as one is led by kindness, grace, and logic, and can rely on the wise counsel of close friends and loved ones.

Birds of a Feather finds psychologist and private investigator Maisie Dobbs on another adventure in London. It is the spring of 1930, and Maisie has been hired to find a runaway heiress. But what seems a simple case at the outset soon becomes increasingly complicated when three of the heiress’s old friends are found dead. Is there a connection between the woman’s mysterious disappearance and the murders? Who would want to kill three seemingly respectable young women? As Maisie investigates, she discovers that the answers lie in the unforgettable agony of the Great War.

Dorothy Graham is dead, which is inconvenient, not least for her. Luckily, she has planned for this eventuality. Now, if any of the truly dreadful people she is related to want to get their hands on her money, they’re going to have to do so via a fiendish difficult and frankly bizarre competition of Dorothy’s devising. After all, just because you’re dead, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a last laugh at the expense of people who made your life miserable.

Its 25 years since John Rebus appeared on the scene, and 5 years since he retired. But 2012 sees his return in Standing in Another Man’s Grave. Not only is Rebus as stubborn and anarchic as ever, but he finds himself in trouble with Rankin's latest creation, Malcolm Fox of Edinburgh's internal affairs unit. Added to which, Rebus may be about to derail the career of his ex-colleague Siobhan Clarke, while himself being permanently derailed by mob boss and old adversary Big Ger Cafferty. But all Rebus wants to do is discover the truth about a series of seemingly unconnected disappearances....

Adele Schumacher isn't a typical worried mom. When she hires Elvis to find her missing son, a controversial podcaster named Josh Shoe, she brings a bag filled with cash, bizarre tales of government conspiracies, and a squad of professional bodyguards. Finding Josh should be simple, but Elvis quickly learns he isn't alone in the hunt—a deadly team of mysterious strangers are determined to find Josh and his adult film star girlfriend first.

Tres has taken a short term teaching job at the University of Texas at Austin. He is living with his brother Garrett, a computer wizard, and enjoying this easy assignment. But when Garrett’s business partner is murdered, Tres must switch from professor to detective. Rick Riordan, teacher, Texan, and multiple award-winner, creates a masterful mixture of local color and mystery in each Tres Navarre mystery.

Sinclair Rutherford is a young Seattle cop with a taste for the finer things. Doing menial tasks and getting hassled by superiors he doesn't respect are definitely not "finer things". Good police work and bad luck lead him to crack a case that changes quickly from a career-making break into a high-profile humiliation when footage of his pursuit of the suspect - wildly inappropriate murder weapon in hand - becomes an Internet sensation.

Newly appointed police inspector Domenic Jejeune doesn't mind ruffling a few feathers. His success has elevated him into a poster boy for the police. The problem is Jejeune doesn't really want to be a detective at all; he much prefers watching birds. Recently reassigned to the small Norfolk town of Saltmarsh, Jejeune's two worlds collide with the grisly murder of a prominent ecological activist.

"Il ne l’aurait probablement jamais avoué, mais il avait hâte de prouver sa valeur à la belle Roxy. Il s’entendait déjà lui lancer: Je l’ai trouvé, ton crotté! Certes, il avait claqué de l’argent qu’il devait à d’autres. Passé proche de se faire tabasser. Mais Georges Kirouac, détective privé, était un homme sur qui on pouvait compter."

Everyone knew the kind of girl Jean Timberlake was: wild, looking for trouble. But she certainly wasn't looking for murder. She was found dead on the beach 17 years ago, and an ex-boyfriend named Bailey Fowler was convicted of her murder and imprisoned, and then escaped. Now private eye Kinsey Millhone steps into a case that should have never been closed, in a town where there's no such thing as a private investigation.

Private investigator Atticus Priest is employed by a disgruntled ex-husband to dig up dirt on his estranged wife. But when she goes missing after swimming in the River Avon, Atticus uncovers a conspiracy between five lifelong friends that goes back years. The friends did something when they were younger that they're not proud of. It's something that would land them in a world of trouble if it ever came to light. Something they've been trying to bury ever since. But Atticus finds one secret and then the next.

Every morning Boone Daniels is out with the Dawn Patrol: four men and one woman as single-minded about surfing as he is, or nearly. They have real jobs; Boone works as a P.I. just enough to keep himself in fish tacos and in the water. But Boone is also obsessed with the unsolved case of a young girl named Rain who was abducted while he was with the San Diego police.

Disgraced ex-cop Robert Hoon has crossed the wrong people for the last time. Having struck a humiliating blow against the criminal network known as the Loop, Hoon has been targeted by the Alphas, an elite squad of assassins who will not stop until he is dead. Outnumbered, outgunned, and on unfamiliar territory, Hoon’s only chance of survival lies several hundred miles north, in a place he knows better than anyone else on Earth. He swore he’d never set foot there again, but almost four decades after he left, Bob Hoon is finally going home.

Charley Davidson, Grim Reaper extraordinaire, is pissed. She’s been kicked off the earthly plane for eternity - which is the appropriate amount of time to make a person stark-raving mad. But someone’s looking out for her, and she’s allowed to return after a mere hundred years in exile. Is it too much to hope for that not much has changed? Apparently it is. Bummer.